Noble Warrior

ALSO BY ALAN LAWRENCE SITOMER

The Hoopster

A Teacher's Guide—The Hoopster

Hip-Hop Poetry and the Classics

Hip-Hop High School

Homeboyz

The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez

Nerd Girls—The Rise of the Dorkasaurus

Nerd Girls—A Catastrophe of Nerdish Proportions

Caged Warrior

Copyright © 2015 by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

Photograph of hands by Maria Elias

Additional cover photos © 2015 Shutterstock

Cover design by Maria Elias

All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 125 West End
Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

ISBN 978-1-4847-2009-7

Visit
www.hyperionteens.com

Contents

1. Title Page
   
2. Also by Alan Lawrence Sitomer
   
3. Copyright
   
4. Dedication
   
5. Epigraph
   
6. One
   
7. Two
   
8. Three
   
9. Four
   
10. Five
    
11. Six
    
12. Seven
    
13. Eight
    
14. Nine
    
15. Ten
    
16. Eleven
    
17. Twelve
    
18. Thirteen
    
19. Fourteen
    
20. Fifteen
    
21. Sixteen
    
22. Seventeen
    
23. Eighteen
    
24. Nineteen
    
25. Twenty
    
26. Twenty-one
    
27. Twenty-two
    
28. Twenty-three
    
29. Twenty-four
    
30. Twenty-five
    
31. Twenty-six
    
32. Twenty-seven
    
33. Twenty-eight
    
34. Twenty-nine
    
35. Thirty
    
36. Thirty-one
    
37. Thirty-two
    
38. Thirty-three
    
39. Thirty-four
    
40. Thirty-five
    
41. Thirty-six
    
42. Thirty-seven
    
43. Thirty-eight
    
44. Thirty-nine
    
45. Forty
    
46. Forty-one
    
47. Forty-two
    
48. Forty-three
    
49. Forty-four
    
50. Forty-five
    
51. Forty-six
    
52. Forty-seven
    
53. Forty-eight
    
54. Forty-nine
    
55. Fifty
    
56. Fifty-one
    
57. About the Author
    

Dedicated to Wendy Lefkon
for her excellence, for her faith, for her awesomeness

With special thanks to…

My brother Roberto, for sampling the boo-boo pancake and being the absolute KEY to getting this book right. Love you, dude!

Terry Kaldhusdal, for making countless hours of deep, challenging discussions feel like mere pleasantly passing moments of good conversation with a good friend.

Jeremy the Warrior, for teaching me about the true nature of fear and the true nature of strength. (A shout-out to the men, too!)

Al Zuckerman, for being so much more than a literary agent…a prince among men!

And of course, to the ladies who live under my roof: Sienna Brynn & Quinn Bailey, for teaching me the real meaning of true love and showing me the unequivocal joy of
fatherhood…and for Tracey, whose tremendous dedication to our home is the straw that stirs our family's drink.

Plus, a HUGE shout-out to G-money…without his solarium, Wi-Fi, car, cell phone, printer, sushi companionship & couch time, none of this gets written.

“IF AN INJURY HAS TO BE DONE TO A MAN IT SHOULD BE SO SEVERE THAT HIS VENGEANCE NEED NOT BE FEARED.”

—Niccolo Machiavelli

M
cCutcheon “M.D.” Daniels ate like a caveman. Raw food, raw power. After switching to an exclusively Paleolithic diet nearly three
years ago he felt immediate benefits in each realm of the fighter's holy trinity: body, mind, and spirit. Physically, by cutting out all the crap he used to eat, M.D. recovered more quickly
from the vicious toll cage wars take on the human body. Mentally, like most serious mixed martial artists, McCutcheon sought to carry his discipline off of the mat and into his life, which meant
that saying no to tasty foods like pizza, burgers, fries, and cake meant saying yes to deep reserves of mental strength. In the sphere of spirit however, McCutcheon owned wounds. Deep ones.

How could he not be scarred after all the senseless violence and pain he'd already witnessed in his young life? He once saw a neighbor get shot in the face. Saw another overdose on heroin
and drown in his own puke. Watched a girl stumble around like a drunken hobo with a knife sticking out of her eye after she'd been stabbed during a robbery gone bad. Yet despite seeing all
this and more before the age of seventeen, McCutcheon still deeply believed in religion.

The religion of being a warrior. In its nobility he found truth. Living by a code wasn't a burden to M.D.; it was his church.

“We're closing in fifteen,” a waitress said. “Here's your check.”

McCutcheon clicked a red cigarette lighter and torched up a bowl. “Thank you,” he said exhaling a plume of thick white smoke.

“Pay at the front.”

“Shall do.”

Putting toxins in his body was entirely out of character for M.D., but the waitress didn't know that. To her and everyone else in the establishment, McCutcheon was just another guy
lighting up on a Friday night.

Which, of course, he wasn't.

He gazed out of the corner of his eye across the dimly lit, smoke-filled room at his six-foot-one-inch tall target and took another soft, sweet hit off the brass hookah pipe resting in front of
him. The chocolate-skinned Somalian he spied—male, eighteen, typing on a laptop—didn't lift his eyes from the glowing bluish screen. Arabs had been smoking from hookahs for well
over five hundred years, but M.D. hadn't come to Mystic Wonders to puff.

He'd come to fight.

His mission: apprehend a teenage terrorist who had plans to blow up the senior prom of the largest high school in the state. Biggest obstacle: the chances of a radicalized Al-Shabaab soldier
simply coming along with an undercover federal agent without putting up a fight landed somewhere between zero and no fucking way.

The clock ticked to 1:47 a.m., and two girls, one with mysterious brown eyes the other with swollen, perky breasts, rose from their table, threw their purses over their shoulders, and exited
through the dark green front door, their men following right behind.

A brass bell, cheap and tinny, jingled as the door closed. McCutcheon pulled another hit off his pipe and waited seven full minutes before making his move. His training had stressed the
importance of allowing a battle theater to settle into stillness before initiating action, and no one trained with more diligence, dedication, or balls-out mettle than the soldier who didn't
even officially exist—Murk Team recruit Agent ZERO X1.

M.D. walked to the front counter. His target sat on a black bar stool, a woven Persian tapestry hanging on the wall behind him, a twenty-four-inch touch screen digital cash register sitting on
the hard wooden counter directly to his right.

“You paying cash or credit?”

“I'm looking for Ibrahim Ali Farah.”

A pause. Eye contact as the North African's gaze slowly moved to meet M.D.'s. His fingers froze mid-stroke, he turned his head and waited. It was almost as if he expected someone
else to come out and answer the question for him.

Which is exactly what happened.

A bloodred curtain parted and a muscular silhouette appeared from a private back room. Penetrating, threatening eyes sized up McCutcheon.

“Zuri. Come,” the shadowy figure called out over his shoulder. “Trouble.”

A second silhouette emerged, tall and lithe, and two men stepped forward into the dim light. They both glared at M.D. with coldness. One stood thick and stocky, biceps like bank safes rippling
underneath a white V-neck tee. The other was six feet three inches tall, had a goatee, lean physique, and a two-inch scar above the corner of his left eye.

Just two? McCutcheon thought. They weren't as prepared as he'd expected. Nor as they would need to be. Not if they were going to deal with M.D.

Not tonight.

Prior to getting the green light to strike his target, McCutcheon had been having a rough evening. Extremely rough. Ever since he made the decision to abandon his girlfriend—no good-bye,
no explanations, no “talk-to-ya-soon”s or “I'll-be-in-touch”s, just
Poof!
he disappeared—emotional hurricanes of sadness, regret, and anger had been
washing over him. As with all elite soldiers, M.D. knew his job was to put his emotions on a shelf and go do the hard work that had been set in front of him—no excuses, no complaints, no
bullshit—yet tonight he felt edgy.

M.D. was in no mood for messing around, and though discipline, patience, and the science of being a poised and methodical warrior usually steered his decision making, frustration, tension, and
an urge to just rip through somebody with the rage of a lion raced through his blood. A late night dance with a couple of evil-hearted partners, he thought, might be just the bucket of cold water
M.D. needed to douse the flames scorching his wounded heart.

As much as McCutcheon loathed his father, Damien “Demon” Daniels, an ex-prizefighter who washed out of pro boxing and then fell into an abyss of crime, drugs, gangs, and whores, it
was all playing out just like his dad had once told him it would: “Relationships'll just fuck a fighter up.” McCutcheon dismissed his father's warning back when these words
were first spoken as nothing more than the BS of a jaded man. But this was also before M.D.'s heart had been spiked by Cupid's arrow. The truth hurts, but when the truth comes from the
lips of a person you despise, its sting yields twice the pain.